Destination Unknown

Color me skeptical, but in
my 22 years of existence, I’ve read enough reviews to tell you that whenever a
critic writes personal snippets on what it’s like to review, it is certainly
going to set the stage for a scrutiny of something awful. I’ve seen this in
movie, in videogame, in TV and in software reviews before, and so far my
previous statement has been proven 100% accurate. So while I’m going to wander
to some story about myself, care to wager a guess on whether or not I
liked VST & Co.’s Bossa Nova Collection album?

I remember a conversation I
had with somebody. After having read many of my reviews, this girl wondered why
I’m doing such thing. Am I having fun with it? Is it because there is money
involved? What do I get out of it?

Honestly, I have no
idea how or why I started reviewing, but I can honestly say that I like doing
it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I like expressing my opinions, and
review is an ultimate form of that. Maybe it’s because I like the challenge of
telling others in the most informative way what a product is about. So yes, I
have a lot of fun doing such thing.

There is, of course, money
involved, but this is a blog, not a site that’s sponsored by Down Beat or
supported by PayPal. So I don’t get to earn anything, and what’s worse is that
the money pours out of my wallet. You can say that I am pretty dumb for doing
this trivial pursuit, which actually has me losing a lot more than gaining.
However, I can tell you that I do get to feel good about myself in doing reviews
because I can tell others where they should spend their money, and I can tell
others to stay away from atrocious albums such as this one.

This is an example of
a washout product that has no particular reason of being made, other than to
clutter the shelf of the records store and to milk cash, hoping to deceive the
unsuspecting public. With its cheap price tag, it is of no surprise to anyone
that it’s actually selling. And good lord, there are sequels and spinoffs to this
album because it sells! Whatever happened to "word of mouth"? Oops, I forgot:
this is the Philippines, home to where Sex Bomb Girls and Masculados are
bestsellers. Home to where a critic can, audaciously, give Carlos Agassi’s
album a 3 out of 5!

Granted, I got this album
without paying a painful P250, yet it still did take away part of my life. Every
second I’ve spent in listening to the albums is a second I lose for my life. I
could hardly contain my urge of defenestrating this CD. I just had to review it
first.

VST & Co., who are they
anyway? *Shrugs* I’m wondering why I should care after this ill-conceived effort. All I know is that they’ve been around for quite a while. They have,
in an attempt to ride the success of the recent craze, recorded disco-era
favorites (the first song Disco Fever should be a dead giveaway) of Joey de
Leon and Marvic and Tito Sotto, and rendered it in Bossa Nova for this
particular "experience". Did they merely read the Wikipedia write-up on Bossa
Nova and immediately thought they’re already capable of fabricating a good song
out of this Wiki-knowledge? The songs are incredibly dull, formulaic and
generic, that I can’t even tell any of them apart. There are no variations to
speak of. I can actually make a conjecture at the kind of conversation that
took place in the studio, which probably went like:

Ok, guys, let’s create a
Bossa Nova album. Set all songs’ time signature to C (4/4). Anyone can play the
sax? Good! We need a saxophone because it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that a Bossa
Nova song has this ‘Stan Getz’ vibe. Guitarist, play your chords with quarter
note, quarter note half, eighth note, quarter rest progression. You there, go
shake these maracas around. And as for you, you’re the clamshell guy. Now get
me a Casio organ and let’s start stealing, err, earning some money!

When all those
ideas get patched together, what we have is music’s equivalent of Frankenstein
– dull, dumb, drab, droopy and dreaded. ALL of the songs stay on a
constant and a very stagnant pace, even during the times when the organ ups the
tempo of the overture (I can’t believe I’m using this word for something this
bad). The vocals, while without sour quavers, sour notes or off-keys, are
delivered with neither emotion nor energy. In fact, nothing inside this album
is convincing me that it’s not an afterthought.

The fact that this album is
cluttering the records store makes me shudder. I’ve emphasized, repeatedly,
that Bossa Nova could really use some creativity; yet artists such as VST and
Co. are so intent on lowering its sight by bludgeoning classics of different
genres. One close look at the etymology of Bossa Nova, I have come to realize
that it originated from "new style". There is nothing so new about what VST’s been doing.
They’re just rehashing tired concepts. But since they’re so inclined on bearing
a two-worded distinction, let me give their album some alternative: vapid
volumes, catastrophic concepts, and micturated messes.

Then again, I may be a
little too harsh. The album is not completely useless. If you have a dog and
you do own this VST & Co. Bossa Nova Collection CD, rest assured that you
already have the equipment to train your dog for Frisbee-catching competition.

Score: 1 out of 5

I’ve always been quite oblivious to our local jazz scene,
since no one seems to take much effort promoting this Pinoy Jazz genre. It has
become a problem to our music industry for a long time, because jazz is very
often perceived as either an acquired taste, or oldies music. The latter
stereotype can elicit my screaming of "foul!" because I think it’s just a lazy
pretext for ignoring the genre. Anyone who’s ever heard of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew or John Coltrane’s Giant Step can attest that Jazz is FAR from
sounding antiquated. Acquired taste, maybe. It’s a quality that has surfaced
since the advent of Free Jazz – around 40 years ago; and therefore casual
listener began to flounder. And since one can approximate that 80% of
Philippines population listen to music merely on casual basis – they don’t care
that much about the instrumentations, or the significance of the theme - Jazz
has long dropped out of our pop-song-humming, Barry-Manilow-singing citizens.

Here’s the story. One day I was bored. It was probably a
Tuesday (as it’s my most yawnworthy day of the week.) So I logged on to the
Internet and posted some comments for my favorite blogger. After having
professed of being a jazz junkie, it was then that I was first told about
Mishka Adams.

Don’t you just love the Internet?

I searched all over to inquire further about this album.
There’s Mishka’s own blog. There are journals about other’s personal experiences
with Mishka’s music (and the feedbacks tend to be positive). Then there’s the
Amazon, home to the laziest Mishka’s review ever written. One "critic" gave
Mishka Adams’ album God Bless The Child a 5 star and said she’s "Billie
Holiday + Norah Jones + Diana Krall". Gee, thanks for clarifying it in a blunt,
"pithy" manner.

It’s been VERY arduous for me to write her a review, mainly
because while jazz shibboleths have become part of my lexicon, I can’t say the
same for world music and pop. What I immediately noticed is that Mishka Adams’ God Bless The Child album have many jazz standards where jazz’s criteria can
easily be imposed (like Body and Soul, and Autumn Leaves, to name a
few), but they are performed in a manner that resembles either New Age or
Afro-Cuban music a lot more. And it doesn’t help too that her originals play
like something that would sit beside a Barbie Cradle’s ballad, albeit a lot
less commercialized and containing messages that are a lot more sensible than
Kitchie Nadal’s high-school-love-notes poetry. So instead of going the standard
route (do I even ever tread that path?) let’s just dissect the Amazonian’s
review in hopes of making a cogent analysis.

Mishka Adams obviously is heavily inspired by Billie
Holiday, and her opuses draw heavy influence on Billie’s fan favorites. One
only has to listen to God Bless the Child of both to realize that their structures are VERY identical, right down to the tempo, dynamic and even the
key signature. The same can be said about Body and Soul and Summertime. But
thanks to the choice of mostly well-done instrumentations, and Mishka Adams’
Enya-contaminated larynx, her renditions end up sounding fresh and distinct
from my straight-out-of-vinyl Billie’s album. Without going into many details,
let’s just say that Mishka’s jazz standards contain tinges of latin,
afro-cuban, and even reggae.

I’m not sure how one is able to find analogues to Norah
Jones and Diana Krall though, as Mishka doesn’t sound anywhere like them both.
Quite honestly, it makes the reviewer read like a jazz dilettante. My guess is
that the only similarity is the accessibility. One isn’t required to know the
basic tenet of jazz theories to be able to appreciate their music. All of them
are able to appease the basest impulse of anyone’s ear with their relaxing and
oft-consonant melodies. Where Mishka is different from the rest, though, is
that she is under no pretense of being high-cultured or elite. In fact, while
others have made themselves unreachable to casual listeners (e.g. Pat Metheny
and Ornette Coleman) and even have gone as far as to exude a snobbish, Ivory-Tower appeal (e.g.
Diana Krall), Mishka has, in fact, very adeptly mesh together pop’s
accessibility with jazz’s sensibility. Ask any recent UP student and they’ll be glad to tell you that Mishka rocks, even though the word "rock" isn’t something you would use as praises to a soulful jazz crooner.

Although the bulk of her album is comprised of jazz
standards, there are enough original materials that are written exclusively for
this release. And these original materials deserve praises too, since they do
not sound like pastiches of the covers, much unlike Sitti’s Para sa Akin.
Though some may say that it’s a cheap trick to make Mishka’s distinct by having
her originals fall in a different category (pop with a touch of world
music, to be specific) to her covers, that doesn’t discount the
greatness of those compositions. They are attuned to earn the approval of fans of
Barbie Almalbis’ "Cradle Days", but without the gratuitous and embarrassing
teenage-angst that are recently too popular with many female pop-rock superstars. Written with a society-sensitive lyrics in mind, they help reveal
to the listener the range of Mishka’s talents that I don’t think it even matters
much if they’re jazz or not.

Besides throwing purists off for mood-inconsistencies, there’s only one other flaw I could think of. The instrumentations are mostly well done, but Mishka might want to do
something about the saxophone. While it doesn’t sound cacophonous, on some
songs like Autumn Leaves, the saxophone is extraneous. I don’t think it does
much to actually enhance the music.

Looking past that peeve though, Mishka Adams’ God Bless the
Child still every bit deserves the  Awit Awards accolade. I am very glad that some local artists are finally taking the effort
to revive jazz’s popularity by straddling the gap between accessibility and
artistry. Sure, Mishka Adams can probably still do a plenty more with her
talents, but as it stands, this album is well worth the time and purchase. And only at P350, you definitely can’t go wrong.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

As an aside, whether or not you already own the first issue,
be sure to get the special edition album of hers. It has contents - 4
additional songs and 2 music videos - that can make any album collectors
happy.

Argh! I just couldn’t finish writing my latest review!

My blog has been very quiet these days. TOO QUIET, in fact, that it appears to be on life support. I have too many duties to fulfill and I barely get enough time to write about stuffs at all.

And now here I am, instead of writing a relevant subject matter (i.e. what people come here for) I’m posting another inconsequential entry. I must be really bored!

Tagged - The rules are once you’ve been tagged you have to write a blog
with 6 weird things or habits about yourself. In the end you need to
list 6 other people to tag and put their names in your blog. Don’t
forget to leave a comment saying "you’ve been tagged, read my blog" (author’s note: sorry, but I’m not going to do the listing bit. I’m too lazy for that.)

1. I can talk so much about Jazz music that it sounds as though that’s my career. I even know a fair amount of musical jargons, such as diminuendo, crescendo, arpeggio, allegretto, vivace, etc. As a result, people sometimes think I am a musician. Nice. I would love to be one, so that instead of critiquing other people’s music, I would make my own record (while still critiquing other’s music, a la Pat Metheny to Kenny G, or Keith Jarrett to Wynton Marsalis). And besides, I wouldn’t call music my "career" had it really been what I get paid for. I only reserve the word for  something far more dull and prosaic. If music was my job, I’d call it "living fantasies".

2. I totally hate corporate ineptitudes. The guiltiest offender of this is "bureaucracy", which is a fancy term that actually means "a lot of queuing and running around and waiting just to get one page printed". I mean, sheesh, it’s not as though we enjoy seeing you, people in government office, biting fingernails or yapping around with each other while we wait for our papers to get "processed" or "incubated".

3. Knowing that I’m aurally sensitive, why, oh why, does EVERY funny noise seem to quell whenever I’m awake, only to clog my ears whenever I try to take a nap? There has been far too many occasions that substantiate my belief that "Everytime I try to sleep, the world conspires that I stay awake". Whenever I try to close my eyes, there’s always a not-so-coincidental banging and scratching and scraping and, good Lord, a cacophonous telephone’s ringing that would wake me up. Guys, I get tired too! And I don’t take steroids!

4. You can write a 500-paged essay about why you think Hale music rocked, and how his "cryptic" lyrics spoke of truth of divine significance. Here’s a bolder truth: I. don’t. give. a. damn. Hale (and his ilk) sucks!

While I’m more commonly an open-minded person, when it comes to music, I’m quite obstinate.

5. I would talk about practically anything, which might weird some people out. They think I have opinion on just about anything (which I don’t. I have no clue whether it should be Christmas or Xmas). And they think I would disagree with them on just about anything  (and again, I don’t). I just don’t follow norms or its way of thinking. Of course that’s a vague rhetoric, and I have no idea how to be a little more specific about my esoteric tendencies. I can only tell you that I’m just that: esoteric.

And Hale sucks.

6. I really hate people who try to bait you on your sympathy. To be more specific, I don’t like it when people seek attention by making you feel sorry for them. Doubly so if the sorry-state wasn’t honest. As an example, I do give alms to the beggar if they are honest about their need of finances, but I don’t give a .02 to ANYONE claiming s/he hasn’t got the money to commute home, because dammit, how come I see you doing the same thing, for exactly the same reasons, every-freakin-day?

Another example is when a certain boy begs to have a girl’s affection, by narrating his sob story and how the girl would make his life infinitely better. Gosh! If you have a sob story, isn’t it better that you deal with it yourself instead of dragging other people along for the jerky ride? So dumb.

The reviews will be back soon. So just wait a little longer.

1.Is your friendster name your real name?
~ No. My real name is Clark Kent.

2. Elaborate on your primary photo.?
~ I’m studying when some idiot took pictures of me
because they feel the need to patronize me by
making me look "intelligent".

3. How many testimonials do you have?
~ enough to make a book

5. What’s your current relationship status?
~ not getting along very well with my bank accounts

6. What are you wearing right now?
~ why, does knowing what i’m wearing turn you on?
sorry, i’m not into cybersex.

7. What is your current problem?
~ i need an architect who will help me build a
secret base inside a volcano where i can plot
world conquest.

8. What are you doing right now?
~ procrastinating

10. What/who do you love most?
~ not this survey

11. What makes you happy?
~ emoticons

12. Are you musically inclined?
~ No. I keep coming back to that first note.

13. What would you do if you woke up one
morning and found out you were beside & all
tangled up with the person you love in bed? And
naked?
~ "Wow, I didn’t know you were into bondage and
sadomasochism. No wonder I don’t even remember
sleeping with you."

14. If you could go back in time, and change
something, what would it be?
~ I would’ve slept in a different bedroom so that
no one would’ve tied me up and took my clothes
off, like as described above.

15. If you MUST be an animal for ONE day,
what will you be?
~ a tiger..because it’s sexy <- Oh my God, really?
Particularly his ROAR-bust physique?

16. Ever have a near death experience?
~ everytime I see a hot mama jama.

17. Name ONE obvious quality you have.
~ well it’s obvious that my mother loves my face.

18. What’s the name of the song that’s stuck
in your head right now?
~ well damn! there’s many! let me think…

19. Are you happy today?
~ not when it sounds like michelle branch’s song

20. Who will cut and paste this first?
~ your mom

21. Name someone with the same birthday
as you.
~ i’m too busy not caring

22. Who was your first kiss?
~ hershey’s

23. Have u ever vandalized someone’s private
property?
~ writing a new definition of "graffiti art", eh?

24. Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex?
~ well, britney spears want it another time, but
i’ll pass.

25. Have you ever sang in front of a large
audience?
~ yes

26. What’s the first thing you notice about the
opposite sex ?
~ if they’re really the opposite sex.

27. What is your biggest mistake?
~ i editted it already

28. Have you ever hurt yourself on
purpose?
~ while reciting those "cryptic" Hale "poetry"?

39. Say something totally random about you?
~ marvelous

31. Has anyone ever said you looked like a
celebrity?
~ actually, it’s the other way around.

32. Do you still watch kiddy movies or TV
shows?
~ i still watch kiddy movies because it’s much
more grown-up than TV shows.

33. Did you have braces?
~ why, you want to impact?

34. Are you comfortable with your height?
~ yes

35. What is the most romantic thing just that
a person did for you?
~ when she told me she writes better sentences.

36. when do you know when its love?
~ What’s this, Bob Marley?

37. Do you speak any other languages?
~ yes

38. What is your favorite smell?
~ not that curious smell from the cubicle

39. Have you ever been to a tanning salon?
~ for what, turn myself to a human coloring book?

40. What magazines do you read?
~ Time Magazine and Reader’s Digest

41. Has anyone you were really close with
passed away?
~ no

42. Do you watch mtv?
~ since when has MUSIC been about USING YOUR EYES?!

43. Do you like Michael Jackson?
~ his "off the wall" days were great, but his
off-wall days aren’t

44. Can you dance?
~ yeah baby!

45. What’s the pls elabor8..?
~ ^^Thine words of eloquence, wilst hastily
penned, spoketh truths of divine significance.

49. What book are you interested to read?
~ i’m still writing the book "how to live a spectacular life"

I’ve been sick some few days ago, and it’s not the kind of sickness where you generally feel like crap all the time. It’s more like the kind of sickness where I’m usually okay, but then there’s a contortion-like sensation that comes in intervals, and it constantly makes me feel like passing out.

Anyway, I’m cured from the sickness now, after taking plenty of antibiotics pills and having rested. My head is still woozy after sleeping for a long time, but now I’m feeling better than before.

It’s funny. Sometimes the world stops being very forgiving. Everything moves at such a frantic pace that I could never keep up. Then suddenly, during an affliction, everything becomes a lot more lenient. Before I got sick, all I’ve been doing is work, work and work, and it wasn’t only until this sickness that, whenever I’m not feeling like crap, I get the opportunity to watch some DVD’s, read some books and even play some videogames. I find myself doing things I don’t have time for whenever I’m 100% healty.

And now I’m all cured, I can’t help but curse the kind of spot I’m normally put into. It’s almost time to step back into that treadmill. Oh how I hate it.